Only Slightly So
by Jan. McNeville
Summary: Disfigurement or damage does strange things to people's lives. MegErikOC triangle. Post WebberLeroux
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: I don't own Phantom of the Opera. Sad, idn't it?

Chapter One: The End of Childhood

The gendarmes hadn't wanted the mask after dusting it for fingerprints and showing it to the detective Rouletabille, after all. M. Firmin was on the verge of throwing it down onto the boards of the Opera stage to shatter, but Meg stopped him.

"Mademoiselle Giry, why-?"

"We have to dance on this floor, m'sieur," she explained deftly. "Porcelain shards are very dangerous, no matter how small, when you're en pointe." It was true, Meg realized, even if it was not her real reason for keeping the mask. "Please."

"Ah. Well, get the thing out of my sight!" The manager relinquished the hated object and Meg hastily concealed it in her bag, wrapping it in an old pair of tights. "As I was saying, Monsieur Moncharmin and myself wish to thank you all for your cooperation with the investigation."

"In recognition of the terrible events of the season, this year's bonuses are to be sizably increased," Andre added, "and a most generous gift of the Vicomte de Chagny will enable us to completely remirror the dancing salon."

Applause, cheers and whistles echoed through the empty auditorium from the stage. The petite rats' bonus was never very large and an increase meant likely little more than an extra pair of shoes, but the old, tarnished mirrors were so universally hated that the dancers sprung up, joined hands and began enthusiastically circling the managers with _pas de chats_ and cheers.

The old mirrors were vintage of the initial construction, and fourteen years' work on the Opera House, plus some six-odd more years the building had been functional meant that the silvered glasses were approximately as accurate in reflection as the waters of the Seine. The silver had tarnished, rendering the view dim and yellowy-brown, and the sheer age of the glass and the hangings had caused warps in the two centermost mirrors. It was like trying to dance before carnival house mirrors that had been painted with yellow varnish. Meg could even hear her mother pounding her tempo staff appreciatively. The handsome young sceneshifter, newly promoted to follow in his late uncle Buquet's footsteps, Claude Angiers, called out a question.

"When shall they be installed?"

"Later this afternoon!" Andre was in his element as the kind employer, not that the leaping, scantily clad dancers presently circling him didn't improve his mood somewhat. Angiers grinned.

"I'll get my tools!"

Meg knew that a great many of the other petites rats thought Angiers –or Arjay, as she was allowed to call him- quite handsome. True, he did have wonderfully soft brown hair and lovely blue eyes that lit up whenever he smiled, but Meg preferred him as an older brother. He was kind enough to teach her the occasional bit of stagecraft after rehearsals, such as how to fix hinges, how to fix the gas lights of the stage when they needed new globes, and even how to run the complicated fly system. Growing up in his old uncle's shadow, Arjay had learned every imaginable trick, even some that people like Firmin and Andre considered distasteful. Just as dancers and soubrettes were associated with courtesans and grisettes, stagehands were considered by some to be only slightly better than criminals. True, Arjay could pick a lock, forge a signature or swipe a wallet better than most convicts, but he had a good reason for knowing how to do each. The time Carlotta had locked herself in her dressing room had demonstrated the use of picking, and the forgery was exceptionally useful for accepting deliveries when M. Firmin was not there to sign for them himself. As for pickpocketing, when a cast member had forgotten a necessary prop they needed for a scene, _put_-pocketing was more the apt name for it. More than once Arjay had pinned flowers to costumes without even Madame Giry noticing, which further endeared him to the petites rats. If Madame Giry caught them unprepared or slacking in any way, their fate was not pleasant.

This fact eventually ceased the revelry over the new mirrors in favor of rehearsal proper. The salon at the back of the stage was opened, so that the old mirrors might be unbolted, and the dancers gracefully went over the latest combinations. Little Jammes had new shoes she was breaking in, which meant that she was ever so slightly unsteady, but in the spirit of sisterhood the other petites rats gave her a wider berth. Everyone had had new shoes before, and the combination thrill and terror of breaking them in was as familiar and sympathetic an event as having to dance with cramps. Meg tried to concentrate on her turnout as she practiced the _grand arabesque_ that precluded the double _chainne_ turn on the sixth eight-count. Her turnout was her only true Achilles heel, as her mother never failed to remind her seven or eight times a day. ("From the _hip! _We are not laying an _egg_ on the stage!") So hard she was concentrating, Meg barely noticed Monsieur Edgar in the corner with his sketchpad again, or La Carlotta complaining about her costume.

The double _chainne_ was never an easy turn, but to Meg it felt like flying, gliding above the boards like a whirling top. She inadvertently made it a triple, landing in perfect third position with a sigh of contentment. Jacquie noticed first.

"Madame! Meg has her triple!"

"Your triple!" Jammes cried, happy for her friend. "Brava!"

"Let us see," Madame commanded, her stern voice not quite hiding a faint half-smile of pride. Tensely, Meg took fourth position, bent to an _arabesque_, and spun. The world whirled for a moment, and then she landed in an only slightly wobbly third. Her fellow rats burst into applause. "Good work," Madame observed calmly, stepping back to her usual place. Monsieur Edgar gave her a congratulatory grin before waving slightly at Meg. "Back to the combination, now."

"May I try for my double, Madame?" Jammes asked. "Meg has been helping me."

"You may."

What happened then was as synchronized as the ballet, but diabolically. Jammes spun off from _arabesque_ just as Carlotta stormed across the stage, swearing in Italian about her costume. The new shoes slid wildly on the smooth floor and the two collided. Carlotta responded to this by shoving poor Jammes, who fell backwards, directly into the old mirror Arjay and the other stagehands were removing.

Meg felt a sharp pain as she lunged to catch Jammes, but gave it little thought as she helped her friend up. There was blood on the floor, but it wasn't until Jammes let out a piercing scream that she realized some of it was her own. Jammes had seen her face.

She also realized she was only seeing the left half of the stage. Meg turned, and, in the wonderful new mirror, beheld her injury for a moment before the other dancers swept in and surrounded her. Her cheeks, her lip, and her forehead were all unscathed. It was just her eye. Her mother shrieked and Meg knew no more.

"Mademoiselle?" Meg awoke in a vast white room that smelled of rubbing alcohol. A white-habited sister from a nursing order stood over the bed with a tray in her hands. "Mademoiselle Marguerite Giry?"

"Wh- where am I?"

"St. Anne's Hospital, on the Rue de les Martyrs. You have been asleep for quite awhile, little one." The nun set down the tray and felt Meg's wrist for her pulse. "My name is Sister Solange. Would you care for some soup?"

Meg blinked –or tried to, and felt the gauze and cotton covering her right eye. The distress must have been evident on her face, for Sister Solange clasped her hand in her own.

"Do not fear, little one. It is a small wound, for all the distress of it."

"Will I…will my eye…?"

"Dear one, you must be brave."

That was all Meg could bear to hear.

Madame Giry had been forced decades ago to forsake her career as a prima ballerina due to a heart condition acquired during a difficult pregnancy with Meg, whereupon she had become the ballet mistress of the Opera Populaire. Every year the doctor urged her to rest more, take life easier, but she was too devoted to the dance and to the support of her only child. The affair of the Phantom had further weakened her, though noone realized how much until it was too late. It was perhaps fortunate she didn't survive to see the true results of Meg's disfiguring accident.

Her petites rats, past and present, some grown to matronage with daughters of their own, some at the peak of their career, some retired from ballet, some changed over to tutors and some, like Meg and Jammes, left suddenly without their beloved teacher -all returned to Paris for the funeral of their dear Madame. Her own corps de ballet seemed leery of her since the accident, but former pupils of her mother's lavished sympathy upon her. Meg couldn't cry, somehow, until she saw a familiar figure appear, on the arm of an equally familiar nobleman.

"Christine!"

"Meg!" The great soprano and the ballerina ran to each other and embraced. "Oh, Meg, I'm so sorry about your Màma…and your eye! We heard about the accident on our way from Montreuil. Will you be able to…?"

"It's doubtful," Meg confessed. She still had white gauze over it instead of the fearsome patch the sisters had already been showing her. "How have you been?"

"We're to be married in June," Christine explained, holding Raoul's hand. "You _will_ be my bridesmaid?" Meg frowned gently and Raoul smiled comfortingly.

"It would take a lot more than a bandaged eye for us to not have our favorite dancer there. Please say you will, Meg."

It was strange, how the Vicomte de Chagny suddenly called her by name. Meg wondered for a moment why before realizing that she must have been Christine's best friend at the Opera. When the madness truly began and Carlotta turned everyone against the young soprano, Meg remembered how she had not joined in the gossip and jibes. It had not even begun to occur to her that her friendship would be so valued, nor that her mother's simple counsel of 'sorority among the dancers, come what may' was as wise as it now proved itself.

"I will," she promised, finally allowing the tears to come.

A/N: Reviews are greatly appreciated, even flames. To be continued.


	2. A Change of Costume

Chapter Two: A Change of Costume

"I heard she's out of the _corps de ballet_ permanently."

"Well, you have to be able to see to dance."

"It's so sad! First her eye, then her màma passing away…"

"Will she be in the chorus?"

"No, I heard she was to be a boxkeeper. You still have to see on stage."

"Meg would _never_ be a boxkeeper."

"She won't," a soft male voice announced. It was Arjay, carrying an armload of tutus with his eyes blindfolded by a scarf. "Costumes, freshly cleaned."

"Arjay, you rogue!" Little Jammes took the tutus and began to hand them out. "Where is Madame Clovier?"

"She's got a cold. Monsieur Reyer told me to bring 'em up and just shut my eyes, but I didn't trust myself. Meg's going to start work with me tonight."

"Really?"

"What's she doing?"

"Meg Giry," Arjay announced grandly, "is the new apprentice fly sceneshifter."

The girls, to put it mildly, were dumbfounded.

"A sceneshifter?"

"Aye, and quite a good one, too, I'm betting." Arjay scratched at his blindfold. "Are you ladies decent yet?"

"Explain this," Madeleine queried. "You need two eyes to dance, correct?"

"Aye."

"Well, then, doesn't a sceneshifter need two eyes?" Arjay gave the girls his best roguish grin.

"Actually, to be one-eyed merely determines which side of the stage is your best work done from. Uncle Joseph had a glass eye, remember?" Several of the girls nodded. "Well, ofttimes the lights are blinding after the dark of the backstage. With your outstage eye covered, you don't lose sight of the ropes so easily. Meg will be the best stage-right flykeeper in the history of the Opera Populaire, mark my words."

"You're so kind, Angier," Sibyl remarked, stroking his calloused hand like a stray kitten. "Taking care of poor, disfigured Meg that way."

"Sibyl Tholomyès, you shut your horrid mouth!" Little Jammes cried.

"I'm going to smack you in another minute!" Madeleine declared. "Meg's no more disfigured than you are, with no nail on your pinky finger. Honestly!"

"I only meant-"

"We all know what you meant!" Chantal declared as Arjay prudently left the scene. "You flirt with Arjay like Carlotta with the new baritone and you're hoping to have Meg's place when the new mistress of the corps arrives."

"I do not!"

"Sibyl, we _all_ saw you. You'd better stop it."

_"Indeed."_

The girls looked around for a moment, petrified by the sound of an all-too familiar voice with no body. They stared and shuddered, until Little Jammes looked directly at Sibyl and shook her head.

Sibyl shrieked.

The bandage wasn't really too bad, Meg reflected. Sister Solange had shown her how to tie the gauzy scarf over the cotton that covered her still-stitched eyelid in a certain way, so that with only a little combing of her curly hair it seemed almost unnoticeable. She didn't have the heart to put on an ugly brown leather patch like the soldiers wore. Mercifully, stagehands and flykeepers did not wear their hair in ballet buns. The coiffure of choice for those whose hair was longer than an inch or two was a kind of queue, held with a ribbon or leather thong. Since hair caught in the ropes could be either excruciatingly pulled out or the cause of a death by broken neck, this style was a requirement, but the crew, in their tradition-bound, old-guard way had added meaning to their method.

"You have a white ribbon, Meg," Arjay explained. "Grosgrain, because satin slides right off, and white because you're new. As soon as you work up a notch, you'll earn yellow, then orange, leaf green…all the way up to black."

"Black is the top?" Meg inquired.

"Black is the most noble color of all to a 'hand, Maggie, you should know that." Arjay gestured to the _shrouds noir_, the thick velvet curtains of darkest black that concealed the backstage from view. "In the blacks, you're invisible."

Meg sighed softly, thinking of what it was to be actually onstage. Her fate was now to be as unnoticable as the curtain-rings. Arjay understood and patted her shoulder.

"Meg, what makes the audience applaud?"

"I don't know…a triple chainnè with arabesque, or a Handel aria."

"Think harder. Why do they applaud when the lights go down, before anyone's had a chance to do anything? Why do they applaud even after the curtain's fallen?" The young man gestured to the lights being lit and set on the battens above them, to the ropesman pulling on his black leather fingerless gloves and gripping the heany fire curtain's draw like the throat of an enemy in practice; to the go-fors tying on the slippers that gave both silence and traction when they ran for the stage manager at speeds near light. "It isn't always the performer himself they cheer for. It's the theatre itself, what it means to put on an opera. Carlotta or M'sieur Courfeyrac could not sing a note alone, nor could the _corps de ballet_ dance even a scrap of Verdi, or the chorus give the scene, not without the men behind the blacks, wearing black, invisible. What is a diva on a stage without hands? The curtain would muffle any sound she made, unopened, the lights would not show her, the set not explain her, nothing. She is just a woman in the dark, whistling to herself, until the 'hands appear without ever being seen.

"Oh, they never see _us_, true, but they don't need to see our forms to know our work. We are the movers unseen, we are the magic makers of the stage. We are as important as any diva or prima ballerina, perhaps more so, because they need the limelight. If they hear a 'boo' or their notes go flat, they are shattered, because they need the audience to tell them how good they are. We know how good we are by how _little_ they notice us. The less we hear about the stage crew, the more perfectly we know we performed.

"The dancers have to perform their steps and the singers have to hit their notes, and the audience knows that. We have to do all of that and more, plus make it invisible. We don't need applause, just our calloused hands and the stage manager's bible. That is why black is the top color." Arjay grinned and picked up a worn, grease-spotted drawstring bag. "Speaking of, these are for you. My first set, freshly cleaned by Madame Clovier's apprentices."

Meg looked into the bag and drew out a black garment, plain in cut and sturdy in construction, but soft as old tights. It rippled and pooled in her hands like finest silk, and even on her soft palms it seemed nearly to catch.

"What is it made of?" she asked in awe. Arjay's grin broadened.

"It's only linen, Meg. You really have to work to get it soft like that, and only soft blacks go on the stage. We can't hear shirts or trousers rustling. That's partly why so many 'hands pass their blacks down when they grow or change." Meg drew out a pair of trousers, nearly as soft as the shirt, with a drawstring belt, and clearly quite sturdy. "Those are black sail canvas. Took me three months of stones and dye to get them nice."

"Stones?"

"You beat the cloth with a broom over a rock or washboard, then you rub them with pumice stones. Then you dye and re-dye them as the fabric wears, so it doesn't fade to gray. Once you break in sail trousers, dear Meg, you've _got_ something. Uncle Joseph left me his. They won't tear, even if you hang by your belt-loops for twenty minutes during the soprano aria in _Manon Lescaut_. I oughta' know."

"That _was_ amusing, especially when the snowflakes stuck to La Carlotta's lip-rouge."

"Hey, it wasn't _my_ fault the snow boxes had jammed."

"But it was good of you to fly up yourself."

"If I hadn't, the scene would have been wrong and Uncle Joseph would have been disappointed. We have to be prepared for adversity."

At that moment, the audience applauded the entry of the conductor. "Speaking of! Meg, stay clear of rope b-10 in the second cage. It's been loose all week. And don't forget the blue lighting cues in scene three!"

It was all very orchestrated, like the technical rehearsals had been, only more exciting. Meg quickly drew ropes b-11 and c-6, lowering the flats for the next scene, and tied them off to the 'spikes,' long protruding bars that the ropes could be wound securely around before they needed to be moved again.

The blue lighting cue required that the white and red lights be lowered. Fortunately, white, red, and blue alike were on separate gas lines, so it was a matter of merely turning two knobs. The scene became a cold, wintry forest. Astonishing! At the tech rehearsal, the contrast had been impressive, but with the actors onstage in winter garb, it was almost lifelike.

There was little time for glances in, however. Meg had to scurry to help get the carriage into place for the new tenor's entrance. She, Arjay, and two other stagehands quickly moved it onto the 'track', which was a pattern of lines painted on the stage to make sure the carriage went where it was supposed to go. Monsieur Courfeyrac was already backstage ahead of cue, unusual for a well-known tenor such as he. Carlotta always had to be given a minute call. He was a handsome man, much younger and slimmer than Piangi, and his costume made him look even nicer.

"Break a leg, Monsieur," the stagehands whispered. He was already well liked by the hands for his lack of holier-than-thou attitude, even if tonight was his first performance at the Opera Populaire. Meg caught a glimpse of Monsieur Courfeyrac's face as they wished him well and realized something: the famous tenor was terrified.

"Merci," he replied _sotto voce_, shaking hands with both of the other stagehands, then with Arjay and finally with Meg. His smile was so abjectly nervous that she wanted to hug him. With a last, scared-rabbit look, he pulled the carriage door gently closed so as to make almost no sound. Carlotta might have slammed it. Arjay gave Meg a grin, as if to exult in their new tenor's politeness, especially after the bitchy diva they were used to. She returned the look as the other characters' chorus ended, and then they signaled the linesmen to roll the carriage forth.

Midway across the stage, the lines attached to the carriage front and back ceased pulling, and it appeared to draw to a stop. With a brave expression, Monsieur Courfeyrac swung the door open and looked out, his top hat making his already handsome features look especially noble and chivalrous. He began his character's opening aria, singing with great fervor about how wonderful it was to be home, in German of course, hitting every note with perfect expression and making several of the audience's ladies gasp. He almost leapt from the carriage as the aria continued, athletically illustrating the character's youth and joy. The actor playing the house's butler appeared and Courfeyrac handed him his top hat distractedly, still singing his heart out to the audience.

Critics had always reviewed this particular composer as hell on tenors. He wrote up to five octave-ranges in single arias, demanded flawless diction to be comprehensible, and generally made himself offensive to the poor sods cast in tenor leads. Some brave souls regarded Von Hauptmann as a challenge, others simply refused to audition for his pieces. To accurately sing the opening aria for the part of Friedrich, the tenor had to have a range down well into baritone territory as well as alto-high. It was rather unfair to give such a difficult part to a new tenor, Meg thought. She didn't blame Monsieur Courfeyrac for being nervous.

As the most difficult part of the aria was played, however, Courfeyrac met each note flawlessly, neither straining nor losing his diction on the treacherous stanza. His German was perfect, especially for a Frenchman, and his baritone notes sounded as rich as a genuine basso profundo could make them. Meg was, to say the least, impressed. The performance was certain to be a success.

A soft scraping assailed her ears, drawing her attention from the handsome tenor. Rope b-10 was slipping its' pin! Another moment and a huge set piece would crash down behind Courfeyrac, marring his opening totally. Meg did the only thing possible. She grabbed hold of the rope and hung on tightly.

The rope slipped fully.

The set piece came down.

Meg went up.

Being accidentally suspended in the air backstage during a show was the stagehand's nightmare. Meg felt the rope stop moving and realized her weight had balanced the set piece somewhere high in the battens. Good. Her hands were starting to ache, so she followed Arjay's advice and let go with one.

Big mistake. Her left arm went slack instead of staying flexed, and Meg felt herself almost fall. She managed to catch the loose end of the rope, which had been her aim by letting go, and gathered it around herself. The end had a C-ring on the end for attachment to the winch, which was used for raising and lowering exceptionally heavy pieces, but right now there was a different purpose. Meg slapped the C-ring's clasp against the taut end of the rope and it engaged, making a loop. With only a little maneuvering, she was able to seat herself in the loop, relieving the now-agonizing pain in her hands.

'But how to get down?' she wondered. Below the scene was changing, to Monsieur Courfeyrac's first meeting with Carlotta's character. She didn't dare risk a noise, and she couldn't lower herself without some more weight to counter-balance the heavy set piece, so she was effectively trapped in the fly system. Merde!

A rustling disturbed her, and suddenly she felt strong arms close around her. Arjay? No, he did not wear gloves, did he? One gloved hand covered her mouth and Meg heard a whisper in her left ear:

"Now be very quiet. We'll fall smoothly." It was a deep, vaguely familiar voice, definitely a man's.

Meg braced herself and the man let go of the other rope he had been supporting himself with, adding his weight to Meg's against the piece. Indeed, they began to fall, but with the man's hand slowing their descent, it was more like gliding. In less time than it would take to tell it, Meg found herself back on the backstage floor, watching the man secure the rope with the C-clamp around the bar that held the pins. A second later he was gone.

"Meg!" Arjay's whisper was urgent. Meg looked at her friend and mutely gestured to the rope, thinking he was angry with her for missing a cue while she had been aloft. But the look in his eyes was fear. "Meg, that was…"

The Phantom of the Opera had struck again.


	3. The Mirror

A/N: Yes, it has been a long time. I've been busy. Sorry! Here you go.

Chapter Three: The Mirror

Arjay's pale countenance darkened in a split second. "I'm going to get him."

"What?"

"I'm going to catch that man and hang him with his own rope." He said it as calmly as if he were announcing his intention to eat out that night. "He deserves it. Are you alright, Meg?"

"…Yes…" Meg was more frightened by Arjay's calm intentions than by the whole incident.

"No, you're _not!"_ There, that was the stagehand she was used to, inspecting her hands with a displeased but friendly frown. "Rope burn. You need champagne."

"Champagne?" Meg was confused. Many of the best stagehands were very opposed to drinking before or during a show, for safety reasons, Arjay especially.

"Yes, of _course_ champagne. There should be a bottle or two in Miss Daae's old dressing room. The managers like me to stash them there so they're cold and close by after the…"

"_What?"_

"Oh. Right. The treatment for rope-burn is to hold something cold. Helps with the pain and keeps the swelling down. You've got to go and _throttle_ the first champagne bottle you find –just pull it out of the ice and wrap both paws around it. Hold it until you can't count your fingers without looking. I'll get you some gloves in the meantime."

"But the next scene…"

"There isn't a change until three scenes past intermission, not counting the lighting cues. You'll be fine. Go on, Meg."

So she went, feeling entirely confused by the whole affair. Arjay was a passionate fellow, especially about the Opera. The cold, unnaturally calm way he declared his intent…it was more frightening than the rope and the Phantom had been, somehow.

Perhaps it was a question of nature. Ropes were meant to be extremely high and a little dangerous. Phantoms of Operas were meant to be extremely mysterious and a little scary. Stage managers were –she was not thinking clearly.

Christine's dressing room was very dark when Meg entered it, but it smelled very familiar. Carlotta used a stifling perfume composed mainly of roses, which, according to Opera legend was capable of raising the dead. Christine had never bothered with perfume, mainly because the petites rats couldn't afford such things, and partly because she'd never liked it. Instead, her old dressing room smelled nicely of sandalwood, which was inexpensive enough that even the littlest rats could afford to keep some in their stocking bags, and lavender, which was free if you knew where to go. It was a nice, reassuring scent –and not just because it reminded Meg of her best friend. As she lit the gaslight, she noticed the little bouquet of lavender had been tied with a very unique knot. It had been hung up, no doubt, by her late mother, who always remembered little touches like that, and always tied everything with her special toe-shoes-ribbon knot. Meg shut her eyes –_eye,_ so as not to cry, and obediently 'throttled' the cold champagne.

Numbness crept into her hands as she gazed into the old mirror. The dim light sent a shadow across her face and almost hid…that. Again, she closed her remaining eye and inhaled slowly, trying not to cry. Tears burned still, though the sisters had said that would fade away in time. It was painful in more than just that way, though. No more dancing. She didn't mind the loss of her looks or the new job half as much as she missed dance. Her muscles had begun to ache the second day in the hospital –to a dancer, lack of use was as uncomfortable as overuse. She had felt awkward, tense and ungraceful, ever since.

Until the weight had been added to her rope, that is.

It was better than pirouettes, that swift but controlled descent. The sound of the other rope against the leather of –maybe it _wasn't_ the Phantom's glove, but it sounded even softer and nicer than the crush of new crinoline underskirts or tights when she put them on. It wasn't dancing, not by a long shot, and she'd been invisible, so there was no thrilling to the audience reaction or basking in applause. And yet, her muscles were no longer tight and dulled from disuse. She felt like there should _be_ applause when her feet touched the ground, the action was so…so _perfect_.

And then the man…

Arjay was superstitious. Yes, the Phantom _had_ haunted the Opera, but he was no more than a man, Christine had said, and with the gendarmes' search, how could he still be there? What sane person would have stayed?

On the issue of sanity…since when did Arjay coolly speak of killing? That remark had shaken her deeply, and she was surprised that it did. A lot of people had expressed ill wishes toward the Phantom, and Arjay's was hardly creative, or even the most vehement. His tone had been calm, matter-of-fact, even.

"_I'm going to get him."_

For what? His uncle? That made sense. But Arjay had never mentioned any ill toward the man before. Why at that moment? Even in the unlikely chance it had been the mysterious Phantom, which Meg was beginning to doubt, it had been a stroke of luck for the production. She couldn't have stayed up there indefinitely, after all, and the restoration of the fly to its' position meant that the scene changes in the second act would be on schedule. Whoever the man was, he had helped keep the show going, assisted a fellow stagehand, and quite possibly saved her life-

That was it, Meg realized suddenly. Arjay was acting protectively of her.

Protectively…and jealously.

Arjay cared for her.

The idea took some moments of pondering. Certainly, she like Arjay. He was kind, always eager to help others, skillful…but did she like him in that way? The calm way he had spoken that fearsome threat, when normally his voice was so shot with passion for every aspect of his craft and affection toward his fellows…it frightened her, more than the Phantom –_the man in the fly system, _ever had.

She couldn't feel her hands. Good. She moved to set the champagne bottle back in the ice bucket, looking down…and it was then that she saw the leather gloves on the pair of larger hands covering her own. She looked back up to the mirror, which reflected a dark patch in the shadows behind her. Meg's face had gone white, as white as Christine's had been…and it seemed to match the bandage covering her eye.

The bandage, frighteningly enough, was in the exact opposite position of another patch of white. Visible on the shadowy figure's face, Meg dimly perceived the mask.

The leather gloves were in perfect position to catch her an instant later.


End file.
